As the King, so Goes the Country

 • Despotic governments do not recognize the precious human components of the state, seeing its citizens only as faceless, mindless—and helpless—mass to be manipulated at will. It is as though people were incidental to a nation rather than its life-blood.
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...Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not “given,” it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice.

--Ang San Suu Kyi, Burma 's Opposition Leader

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Someone once said: As the king, so goes the country. This means that the resonant attitudes and actions of the leader are picked up by his people and spread far and wide.

So, as one watches some of the images below, it is not beyond reason to surmize they are manifestations of the deep-seated Uganda character that has been spawned over several generations of violence. Even while it dealt violently with any challenges to its rule, the colonial occupier gave a temporary respite to the native-on-native violence. Now, we are back to the basics: I have got the gun, and you don’t, so, I will screw you.

Other people wonder; some of us don’t. Uganda is violent from top to bottom. The violent acts of the state trickle down to how we conduct our affairs with one another. In space and time we see its virtual projections in the belligerent and aversive language on Internet group sites. Beneath the effusive Uganda smiles lurk a darkness that often erupts in gruesome hostility with deaths and mayhems in its wake.

Does the guy (in the video) that is breaking the car windows and hauling the opposition leader into the pick-up truck think that he will have this power forever? If change occurs, as it eventually will, how will the oppressed, if they have the gun, treat him?

“I am just doing my job—following orders”—is no excuse. Everybody has a choice. How can the cycle of violence be broken? These are some of the questions that need to be tackled not only by primal emotional coding, but by the elevated content of reasons bestowed by civilizations. A tall order, considering the protagonists and us, the followers, seem armed with only utilitarian education and precepts from mosques and churches that are not organic and skin-deep.

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1152948/-/c25w2jz/-/index.html

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1152856/-/c25wt6z/-/index.html

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1151516/-/c26ol9z/-/index.html
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1152208/-/c262naz/-/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoNt_RKhIdk&feature=player_embedded
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1152320/-/c261taz/-/index.html
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1152316/-/c261u0z/-/index.html
http://newvision.co.ug/D/8/13/753370

Museveni on His Life Presidency

This is Week in the Kingdom of Uganda

From time to time we will be posting some happenings--the underbelly-- in Dictator Museveni's Fiefdom of Uganda.
We take the view that President Museveni is the most dangerous ruler in the history of this God-forsaken country. Why?
1. Uganda is effectively a military police state in the guise of elective democracy
2. Elections are shams where Musveni uses the state coffer to fund hisNRM political machine, uses the intimidating presence of armed military during elections, and the opposition is scared away from getting radio air-time
3. Any public show of dissatisfaction of the populace is crushed by armed police.


Mao (C) is dragged by Gulu District Police Commander Moses Muluya (R) and OC CID Moses Bwebagye to the police station on Thursday. PHOTO BY SAM LAWINO  http://www.monitor.co.ug/


Caught in the escalating stand off between the Police and walk to work demonstrators, Ibrahim Batte was hit by a stray stone as he tried to find his way back home. Photo by Patience Ahimbisibwe
http://www.monitor.co.ug/-/691150/1144896/-/bm3auy/-/index.html



Police officer Mugalya 2324 (L) attached to Jinja Road Police Station pushes journalists from the police station to stop them from covering the arrests during a walk to work campaign on April 14. Photo by Joseph Kiggundu. http://www.monitor.co.ug/-/691150/1144896/-/bm3auy/-/index.html




Dr. Besigye speaks to the press after receiving first aid treatment at Kampala Hospital in Kololo on his injured hand which a rubber bullet grazed during the Walk to Work demonstrations. http://www.monitor.co.ug/-/691150/1144896/-/bm3auy/-/index.html

Uganda's Uncoalition Politics

In Kenya, Raila Odinga was big enough to suspend his ambition to herald the defeat of the entrenched KANU powerhouse. The later chicanery of Mwai Kibaki and his Kikuyu Mafia was regrettable, but nevertheless, a fundamental change of sorts was ushered in.

The chief principals of the Kenya coalition that obliterated the Moi’s KANU were Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga. Both, in addition to Western and Coastal kingmakers, brought real and authentic monolithic tribal loyalties to the table. It was magic.

In Yugoslavia it was students and civil society which urged the political class to unite around one humble lawyer. Milosevic did not know what hit him to eventual heart attack in an ICC jailhouse.

In Uganda, those of us who can’t wait to see Museveni home grazing his beloved long-horned cattle have to wait a little longer to do the jig. The thought of a possible power of coalition was misplaced and not well probed out.

If FDC had made a scientific survey, it would have probably revealed that it make a go at it alone through hard-nosed politicking. Questions were not asked about what Mao, Otunnu, Lukyamozi and other minor Watchamacallits were going to bring to the table in terms of substantial emotional followings. Many, if not all were only potentials in the makings. Some were rabid ego-maniacs who went about to the march of their own drums. All the haggling elevated some and diminished FDC’s head-start and power.

Mao reveled and benefited from the charade of a tango dance with the coalition. Otunnu and his UPC should have been tar babies, untouchables, left alone from the beginning. UPC has become irrelevant, and the noise emanating from Uganda House is the baying of a dying horse. Then, of course, what was the ass-kissing of the Buganda Kingdom and cohabitation with something called SUUBI all about? It was a knee-jerk reaction based on anecdotal perception rather than unvarnished scientific opinion poll. Dr. Besigye should have just uttered the “F” word to satiate the monarchists and gone about consolidating gains in the North and East even as he campaigned in Central, West and his home turf—cognizant that in the latter two he had to chip the hard-rock loyalties to homeboy.

This time around, the Doc, on a scale of one to ten, gets a measly four for strategy. He has fought a gallant battle that could have caved in lesser souls. He opened up the political space. In some people’s book he will always be the bravest man to grace Uganda’s murky politics—not forgetting Bishop Janani Luwum, of course.

What next is anybody’s guess? There are plenty of ideas. All options and scenarios should be soberly studied without losing focus on the price: unloading the weight of the Museveni menace from our backs sooner than later. Sideshows like that of the Federo girl are distracting luxuries serious people can’t afford. Crocodile tears on the past are the crutches of losers. The only thing the opposition can sell is rarefied future in a world of what-have-you-done-for-me-lately. Clearly defined, articulated and formulated the sale pitch may wake the populace from the Musevenian somnambulism and take charge. Otherwise, let us all wait for the Butterfly Effect to aggregate and amplify into an irresistible storm or other such unconventional eventualities.